Rated X (2000)

Directed by: Emilio Estevez | 110 minutes | drama | Actors: Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Rafer Weigel, Tracy Hutson, Megan Ward, Terry O’Quinn, Danielle Brett, Nicole de Boer, Deborah Grover, Dylan McFadyen, Taylor Estevez, Eric Cabral, Peter Bogdanovich

‘Rated X’ is a biographical feature film about two brothers, Artie and Jim Mitchell, who managed to build a porn empire in San Francisco from the 1960s onward, which brought them great successes, but which eventually culminated in a tragic murder.

The lives of Artie (Charlie Sheen) and Jim (Emilio Estevez) are followed from childhood, growing up in a poor family with a strict yet loving father JR (Terry O’Quinn). In the 1960s, society changes and San Francisco becomes a home for hippies and protesters against the Vietnam War. In that climate, where authorities are no longer taken for granted and a freer (sexual) morality arises, Jim smells his chance. As a dropped student at the film academy, he sees opportunities to sell nude films to clandestine theaters popping up everywhere. When Artie returns from military service, the two of them set up their own cinema-cum-film studio. From fairly innocent topless movies they move on to real hardcore pornography.

Lead actors Sheen and Estevez are actually brothers too, which adds a nice touch to their portrayal. Their father, Martin Sheen, is actually called Carlos Estevez and where son Charlie (Carlos) took his father’s acting name, Emilio chose to go his own way. Both Charlie and Emilio have experienced intense ups and downs in their careers and turbulent private lives. In that respect, too, the self-destructive urge for alcohol and drugs of the Mitchell film brothers is an interesting fact. Fortunately for Sheen and Estevez, the mutual rivalry between Artie and Jim never took such dramatic proportions. Slightly disturbing is the fact that Estevez and Sheen are simply too old to continue credibly as students or in their early twenties. In the nearly twenty-five years that the film spans (from 1967 to 1991), they don’t really age. It doesn’t help either that the Mitchells were balding early on and Sheen and Estevez spent most of the movie with shaved heads and weird whiskers.

Estevez also directed the film and does it decently, but not spectacularly. The plot has a fairly linear course and sometimes has a high “..and then… and.. then” content. It’s like he’s ticking off the most important events in the Mitchells’ lives one by one, without adding anything extra. The biggest success was ‘Behind the Green Door’ (1972), with which Marilyn Chambers (here played by Traci Hutson) broke through as a porn star. It is discussed extensively here, as are the countless arrests for “obscenity” and high-profile lawsuits, centered on the constitutional principle of freedom of expression. The latter was already done much better in ‘The People vs. Larry Flynt’ (1996), but ‘Rated X’ invests too little in what this all means, except that Artie and Jim are only more eager for the cocaine.

‘Rated X’ is somewhat confusingly based on David McMuber’s book ‘X-Rated’. The heirs of Artie were not pleased with both the book and the film, because they felt that Artie came forward much too negatively. But actually neither of them are particularly likeable. Estevez also knows too little to highlight the psychological development of the characters, so that the dramatic – and quite shocking – denouement comes out of the blue, so that it doesn’t have the impact it should have.

It’s not a boring film, but there was a lot more in it than Estevez gets out of it. By failing to utilize his brother’s and himself’s talents in the right way, he has turned it into a rather superficial film, only giving a rough sketch of the Mitchell brothers’ lives.